President Obama's State of the Union focuses on climate change; Republicans' sneaky move to give the Keystone XL pipeline a new name; Yellowstone River pipeline spill spews oil and cancer-causing benzene; PLUS: Yes, Republicans vote climate change is not a hoax -- but there's a catch.

The energy industry has transformed the American landscape -- removed mountain tops, scarred vast areas of open pits, destroyed agricultural lands, and poisoned aquifers. Why would we even think of permitting them to despoil anything more? Why would we trust them with the ocean?

Since 2005, the oil train traffic in North America has increased 40 fold. At any given moment, some nine million barrels of crude oil are being transported around North America. Yet we haven't seen any real improvements in the safety of these trains.

BP has argued that, since total flow rate was never measured we have no way of calculating the volume. To this day the company disputes the US government's estimate of 4.2 million barrels spilled into the Gulf, arguing that it was half that.

The problem is that the rapid expansion of hydraulic fracturing activities and tar sands transportation through our communities and regions, and the rapid expansion of offshore oil production, have not been met with meaningful advances in oil spill prevention and response policies and practices.

On the Friday before Labor Day -- in the form of an age-old "Friday News Dump" -- the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) handed a permit to Enbridge, the tar sands-carrying corporate pipeline giant, to open a tar sands-by-rail facility in Flanagan, Ill. by early-2016.